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4'  JAN  jc 

SAMUEL  B.  CAPEN 


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Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Columbia  University  Libraries 


https://archive.org/details/disloyaltyitsremOOcape 


Disloyalty  and  its  Remedy 


By  Samuel  B.  Capen,  D. 

President  of  the  American  Board 


* 


All  Address  delivered  at  the 
Annual  Meeting,  Grinnell, 
Iowa,  October  12th,  1904 


* 


Published  by  the  Board 
Boston 


I 


DISLOYALTY  AND  ITS  REEDY 


It  has  been  my  thought  that  these  annual 
addresses  should,  as  far  as  possible,  grow  out 
of  the  experiences  of  the  year.  I  have  there¬ 
fore  been  led  to  select  this  subject  of  “  Disloy¬ 
alty  and  its  Remedy”  as  the  one  upon  which 
the  greatest  emphasis  should  now  be  placed. 

May  I,  by  way  of  introduction,  call  atten¬ 
tion  to  the  gratifying  fact,  that  in  the  year 
that  has  just  closed,  the  ordinary  receipts 
from  the  living  have  been  greater  than  in  any 
preceding  year  ?  It  is  believed  by  our  officers 
that  there  were  never  so  many  pastors  and 
laymen  doing  personal  and  aggressive  work 
for  foreign  missions  as  now.  Our  co-operat¬ 
ing  committees  are  more  numerous  and  more 
efficient  than  ever  before.  The  district  sec¬ 
retaries  have  been  campaigning  with  great 
vigor  in  their  respective  departments,  and  in 
the  home  office  our  treasurer  has  a  far  larger 
list  of  men  to  whom  we  can  look  for  support 
than  in  years  past.  The  growth  has  not  been 
spasmodic  but  steady,  running  back  over  sev¬ 
eral  years.  Making  the  comparison  with 
JL898,  the  regular  gifts  from  the  living  to  the 
American  Board  direct  have  increased  about 
35  per  cent.,  to  the  Woman’s  Boards  nearly  25 


4 


per  cent.  Those  from  the  Sunday  Schools  and 
Christian  Endeavor  Societies,  on  the  other 
hand,  for  some  unexplained  reason,  have  fall¬ 
en  off  5  per  cent.  Yet,  notwithstanding  these 
encouraging  facts,  I  am  impelled  to  discuss 
the  question  proposed. 

A  few  weeks  ago  a  gentlemen  reduced  the 
amount  he  was  giving  to  support  his  church 
from  $75  to  $60  because,  as  he  said,  it  was  a 
“hard  year,”  but  he  still  keeps  eight  driving 
,  horses!  Why  did  he  not  sell  one  of  these  be¬ 
fore  he  reduced  his  gift  to  his  own  church? 

Eet  me  quote  a  few  sentences  from  some 
recent  letters: —  “I  am  pastor  of  a  congre¬ 
gation  which  cares  very  little  for  missions 
and  nothing  for  foreign  missions.”  Another 
writes,  “  There  is  not  one  man  out  of  a  score 
of  the  average  Christians  in  this  part  of  the 
country  who  has  any  particular  interest  in 
foreign  missions,  unless  he  is  educated  to  it. 
The  apathy,  even  on  the  part  of  active  Chris¬ 
tian  men,  is  sometimes  most  disheartening. 
It  is  due  in  large  measure  to  the  tremendous 
pressure  for  philanthropic  work  in  such  a 
great  city,”  etc.  More  recently  I  have  re¬ 
ceived  a  letter  from  the  pastor  of  a  wealthy 
church,  one  of  the  largest  in  our  denom¬ 
ination.  They  have  a  fine  stone  edifice, 
a  modern  Sunday  School  room  perfectly 
equipped,  a  fine  parsonage  ;  but  for  years  have 
had  practically  no  plan,  worthy  the  name,  for 
giving  to  missions.  The  subject  has  hardly 
been  presented.  A  deacon  recently  told  his . 
pastor  that  “  they  did  not  hire  him  to  preach 
missionary  sermons”  !  Within  a  few  months, 


5 


a  Sunday  School  superintendent  derided,  in  a 
newspaper  article,  the  attempt  to  raise  money 
for  foreign  missions.  When  Rev.  J.  P.  Jones, 
D.  d.,  was  last  in  this  country,  he  told  me  of  a 
cliurch  that  he  visited,  where  the  Sunday 
School  superintendent  did  not  believe  in  for¬ 
eign  missions,  and  the  church  as  a  whole  but 
slightly.  Still,  they  voted  five  per  cent,  out  of 
their  gifts  for  the  American  Board.  At  the 
end  of  the  year,  however,  the  pastor  took  that 
five  per  cent,  for  his  pastoral  fund,  and  the 
Board  received  nothing.  I  give  these  inci¬ 
dents  as  illustrations,  in  order  to  show  the  sad 
condition  in  too  many  of  our  churches,  east 
and  west,  and  this,  notwithstanding  the  won¬ 
derful  success  of  the  last  century  in  missions 
both  at  home  and  abroad.  Is  it  not  down¬ 
right  disloyalty  to  Jesus  Christ? 

“The  Kingdom  is  the  World.” 

If  we  ask  for  the  definite  reasons  for  such 
disloyalty,  I  think  they  may  be  found,  first , 
in  the  fact  that  so  many  have  failed  as  yet  to 
accept  the  great  teaching  of  the  Master ,  ivith 
regard  to  the  Kingdom  of  God  on  earth.  The 
most  superficial  reader  of  the  Bible  must 
recognize  that  his  purpose  was  to  found  a  uni¬ 
versal  empire.  In  parable  and  precept,  in 
one  form  or  another,  this  was  ever  uppermost. 
Even  in  the  last  hours,  when  he  stood  before 
Pilate,  he  spoke  of  the  great  spiritual  king¬ 
dom  which  he  came  to  establish.  Such  a  truth 
ran  counter  to  the  whole  thought  of  that  day. 
The  Jew  prided  himself  on  being  a  child  of 


6 


Abraham  and  called  the  outsiders  “dogs”; 
and  Jesus  used  the  current  thought  of  his  day, 
when,  in  testing  the  Syro-Phoenician  woman, 
he  said:  “It  is  not  meet  to  take  the  chil¬ 
dren’s  bread  and  cast  it  unto  the  dogs.”  The 
Jews  in  Jerusalem  were  willing  to  listen  to 
Paul,  until  he  told  them  that  the  Lord  had 
sent  him  far  hence  to  the  Gentiles,  and  then 
“they  lifted  up  their  voice  and  said,  Away 
with  such  a  fellow  from  the  earth  for  it  is  not 

fit  that  he  should  live.”  The  Greeks  had  the 

• 

same  exclusive  idea,  and  the  whole  world  out¬ 
side  of  themselves  they  called  “barbarians.” 
Jesus  destroyed  all  this  by  teaching  the 
brotherhood  of  the  whole  race  and  the  univer¬ 
sality  of  his  religion  !  It  was  difficult  for  the 
apostles  and  the  early  church  to  comprehend 
this  revolutionary  teaching.  It  was  almost  as 
hard  to  conquer  this  exclusiveness  as  it  is  the 
spirit  of  caste  in  India  to-day.  Simon  Peter 
needed  a  wonderful  vision  upon  the  house-top 
at  Joppa  before  he  understood  that  his  narrow 
conception  of  what  was  common  or  unclean 
was  not  God’s.  Little  by  little,  these  early 
leaders  began  to  understand  the  breadth  of 
the  word  that  the  Master  had  spoken  to  Nico- 
demus,  “God  so  loved  the  world;”  not  the 
Jew,  but  the  “world.”  If  at  any  time  their 
early  training  began  to  assert  itself,  they  re¬ 
called  their  last  marching  orders,  “Go  ye 
into  all  the  world  and  preach  the  gospel  to 
the  whole  creation.”  And  if  they  chanced 
again  to  wonder  at  the  strangeness  of  it  all,  at 
what  almost  seemed,  from  the  human  stand¬ 
point,  absurd,  they  then  remembered  that 


7 


they  had  been  taught  to  pray,  in  the  silent 
hour,  “  Thy  kingdom  come,  Thy  will  be  done 
in  earth,  as  in  heaven.” 

Why  do  I  recall  to  your  thoughts  these  old 
familiar  passages  and  the  truth  which  they 
represent  ?  For  the  simple  reason  that  there 
are  in  our  Congregational  churches  to-day 
so  many  who  call  themselves  Christians, 
and  who  yet  tell  you  with  unblushing  faces, 
that  they  do  not  believe  in  foreign  missions. 
These  people  admit  their  interest  in  city  mis¬ 
sions,  in  home  missions,  or  possibly  in  work 
for  the  Anglo-Saxon  race,  but  that  is  all. 
They  would  feel  insulted  if  you  told  them 
that  they  were  as  narrow  in  their  thinking  as 
those  who  lived  nineteen  centuries  ago,  and 
yet  that  is  the  exact  truth.  They  stand  exact¬ 
ly  where  the  old  Jews  did  in  Christ’s  time,  be¬ 
lieving  that  the  true  religion  was  only  for  the 
Hebrew  race,  and  that  the  interests  of  those 
outside  was  no  affair  of  theirs.  Is  not  such  a 
position  one  of  absolute  disloyalty  to  the  ex¬ 
press  command  of  Christ?  As  though  God 
would  forestall  all  these  modern  objections, 
we  read  in  the  thirteenth  chapter  of  Acts, 
“  The  Holy  Ghost  said,  Separate  me  Barnabas 
and  Saul  for  the  work  whereunto  I  have 
called  them  ;  ”  and  they  started  on  their  for¬ 
eign  missionary  tour.  Well  might  the  Antioch 
church,  which  had  barely  started  on  its  work, 
wonder  at  the  command  to  send  away  these 
two  great  leaders  ;  but,  in  the  end,  it  did  not 
suffer  because  of  its  self-sacrifice  ;  and  Europe 
and,  through  it,  the  world  began  to  be 
leavened  with  the  truth.  Again,  you  recall 


8 


how  Philip  was  conducting  revival  meetings 
in  Samaria,  when  the  spirit  of  God  sent  him 
on  the  road  to  Gaza,  to  preach  the  gospel  to 
the  Ethiopian  eunuch.  This  single  man  of  a 
foreign  nation  was  worth  more  to  the  King¬ 
dom  of  God  just  then  than  all  the  work  Philip 
could  do  in  Samaria. 

Objections. 

In  this  spirit  of  disloyalty  to  the  whole 
teaching  and  life  of  Jesus  Christ,  about  the 
meanest  objection  to  which  we  have  to  listen 
is,  that  we  ought  not  to  interfere  with  the  re¬ 
ligions  of  other  nations.  Suppose  this  mod¬ 
ern  idea  had  been  adopted  a  few  centuries 
ago,  then  Christianity  would  never  have  en¬ 
tered  Europe,  and  we  might,  like  our  ances¬ 
tors,  be  still  in  heathen  darkness.  It  has 
been  well  asked,  whether,  if  Paul  had  been 
led  east  to  Asia,  instead  of  west  to  Europe, 
and  China  to-day  had  our  Christian  civiliza¬ 
tion,  while  we  in  America  were  in  ignorance, 
would  it  be  right  for  China  to  leave  us  to  our¬ 
selves  ?  A  short  time  ago,  Booker  T.  Wash¬ 
ington,  in  a  remarkable  address  at  Boston, 
quoted  Caesar’s  description  of  the  ancient 
Britons  in  the  primitive  state  in  which  he 
found  them.  Next,  he  submitted  Eiving- 
stone’s  description  of  the  African  tribes  nine¬ 
teen  hundred  years  later,  and  traced  the  sim¬ 
ilarity.  Then  he  put  this  proposition:  “If 
one  had  asked  Caesar,  when  he  first  discov¬ 
ered  your  forefathers  in  the  condition  that 
has  been  described,  if  in  two  thousand  years 


9 


they  could  be  transformed  into  the  con¬ 
dition  in  which  they  are  now  found  in  Ameri¬ 
ca,  the  answer  doubtless  would  have  been  an 
emphatic  ‘No.’  If  one  had  asked  Living¬ 
stone,  when  he  first  saw  my  forefathers  in 
Africa,  if  in  the  fifty  years  that  have  elapsed 
since  then,  or  even  in  the  two  hundred  and 
fifty  years  that  have  passed  since  the  first 
African  was  brought  to  this  country,  a  Negro 
young  man  would  be  the  class  orator  at  Har¬ 
vard  University,  the  answer  doubtless  would 
have  been  a  ‘No’  as  emphatic  as  Caesar’s.” 
Shame  on  the  man  who,  with  the  history  of 
the  past  before  him,  and  enjoying  a  Christian 
civilization  which  has  come  to  him  by  inheri¬ 
tance,  and  without  effort  on  his  part,  now 
denies  it  to  others! 

There  is  also  the  Ignorant  Objectors.  We 
hear  men  say  sometimes  that  the  religions  of 
China  and  India  are  older  than  ours,  and 
seem  to  fit  the  wants  of  these  people  —  why 
waste  time  and  money  in  efforts  to  change 
them?  A  pastor  of  a  large  New  Bngland 
church  said  to  me,  that  this  was  the  thought 
of  many  of  his  leading  men.  If  you  go  along 
the  highway  in  China  at  the  present  time,  you 
will  find,  by  the  roadside,  stone  towers, 
shaped  somewhat  like  large  chimneys ;  and 
it  is  the  custom  of  parents,  when  they  are 
weary  of  their  children,  or  when  these  are 
sickly,  to  throw  them  into  these  towers  and 
leave  them,  wailing  and  suffering,  to  die  of 
starvation!  Dr.  Anient,  when  he  was  last 
here,  told  me  of  another  awful  custom. 
When  children  die  in  the  night,  they  are  put 


IO 


out  upon  the  doorsteps,  either  with  nothing 
over  them,  or  possibly  wrapped  up  in  a  straw 
matting.  In  the  early  hours,  they  are  gath¬ 
ered  up,  just  as  in  our  cities  the  health  de¬ 
partments  gather  up  ashes  and  offal,  and  are 
taken  outside  the  city  and  burned.  In  India, 
parents  put  out  the  eyes  of  their  children,  to 
make  them  better  beggars,  knowing  that  in 
that  condition  they  appeal  more  to  the  sym¬ 
pathy  of  others.  And  yet  there  are  men  who 
do  not  wish  us  to  plant  the  Kingdom  of  God 
in  India  and  China,  and  to  teach  fathers  and 
mothers  to  love  their  children  and  to  bring 
them  up  to  lead  better  lives!  God  have 
mercy  on  the  man  who  says  we  ought  not  to 
try  to  save  these  far-away  people.  They 
know  not  what  they  say. 

Then  there  are  the  Shortsighted  Objectors, 
who  are  disloyal  to  Jesus  Christ.  If  we  had 
lived  in  Antioch,  we  should  have  heard  the 
men  of  that  day  speak  of  the  folly  of  Paul 
and  Barnabas  when  they  set  sail.  They  are 
“throwing  themselves  away,”  was  doubtless 
heard  on  every  side.  Business  friends  of  the 
father  of  Frank  D.  Gamewell,  who  has  been 
called  the  engineer  missionary  of  the  siege  of 
Peking,  said  that  he  would  be  throwing  his 
life  away  to  go  as  a  foreign  missionary.  Hu¬ 
manly  speaking,  if  Mr.  Gamewell,  with  his 
special  training,  had  not  been  at  Peking,  and 
had  not  with  true  military  genius  grasped  the 
situation  and  at  once  fortified  for  defense,  not 
a  diplomat,  missionary,  or  native  Christian 
among  those  gathered  there  would  have  lived, 
and  we  should  have  seen  enacted  one  of  the 


II 


greatest  tragedies  of  history.  In  a  similar 
way,  John  G.  Patou’s  pastor  urged  him  not  to 
leave  his  city  missionary  work  in  Glasgow. 
Can  any  one  tell  the  loss  to  the  world,  if  Dr. 
Paton  had  taken  this  advice,  and  had  never 
entered  upon  his  work  in  the  New  Hebrides, 
a  work  which  has  been  one  of  the  brightest 
chapters  in  missionary  history,  and  which  has 
shown  so  wonderfully  the  power  of  God? 
Let  those  who,  in  their  disloyalty  to  Christ, 
put  up  their  pious  groans  about  the  awful 
expense  of  foreign  missions,  remember  that 
the  little  group  of  men  who  thirty  years 
ago  commenced  the  preaching  of  the  gospel 
in  Japan,  have  done  a  hundred-fold  more 
good  by  helping  to  transform  that  mighty 
empire,  than  they  could  possibly  have  done 
at  home. 

I  have  spoken  at  length  upon  this  spirit  of 
disloyalty  to  Christ,  because  it  is  the  greatest 
hindrance  to  the  progress  of  the  Kingdom  of 
God.  One  of  our  ablest  ministers,  who  is 
settled  over  one  of  our  strong  churches,  after 
long  years  of  experience,  wrote  me  these  sig¬ 
nificant  words:  “Five-sixths  of  the  people  in 
our  churches  do  not  assume  responsibility  for 
giving  the  gospel  to  the  whole  world.  The 
small  percentage  of  people  who  give  to  mis¬ 
sions,  or  even  believe  in  missions,  is  astound¬ 
ing,  which  means  that  a  small  percentage  be¬ 
lieve  in  what  is  fundamental  to  Christianity.” 
Whether  or  not  this  is  an  over-statement,  it  is 
impossible  to  decide;  but  that  it  is  not  very 
wide  of  the  truth,  we  are  all  aware.  It  is  a 
severe  arraignment  of  our  Christianity,  and  it 


12 


gives  evidence  of  disloyalty  to  the  Master’s 
teaching,  and  of  ignorance  regarding  the  won¬ 
derful  success  that  has  come  to  the  work  car¬ 
ried  on  by  the  loyal  minority. 

Whose  is  the  Money? 

Second ,  there  is  very  widespread  disloyalty 
because  of  entirely  erroneous  conceptions 
about  the  ownership  of  money.  Men  start 
from  the  wrong  premises,  and  believe  that 
what  they  have  is  their  own,  and  that  it  is  en¬ 
tirely  optional  whether  they  give  anything 
or  not.  You  ask  for  a  gift  to  foreign  mis¬ 
sions,  and  they  treat  your  request  as  they 
would  one  to  buy  a  ticket  for  a  lecture  or  con¬ 
cert,  as  a  matter  simply  of  personal  choice 
and  inclination.  This  is  the  worst  possible 
heresy.  God  says,  “the  silver  and  gold  and 
the  lands  are  mine.”  We,  therefore,  are  not 
the  owners,  but  only  the  trustees  of  what 
we  have,  a  difference  that  is  almost  as  great  as 
that  between  darkness  and  light.  The  ques¬ 
tion,  then,  is  not,  “How  much  of  mine  shall  I 
give?”  but,  “What  part  of  God’s  shall  I  keep 
for  myself?”  It  is  not  what  we  give,  but 
what  we  have  left,  that  measures  the  gift  from 
God’s  standpoint. 

This  was  a  fundamental  idea  with  the  He¬ 
brews,  and  it  is,  therefore,  easy  to  understand 
why  in  Old  Testament  times  they  paid  their 
tithes  to  the  L,ord.  Their  religious  organiza¬ 
tion  was  supported  in  two  ways,  by  tithes  and 
by  freewill  offerings.  The  latter  were  option¬ 
al  but  the  former  everyone  had  to  pay  or  be 
disloyal.  They  were  as  much  a  part  of  the 


13 


warp  and  woof  of  their  religion  as  the  keep¬ 
ing  of  the  Sabbath.  One-tenth  of  their  in¬ 
come  from  every  source,  and  one-seventh  of 
their  time,  were  holy  unto  God.  For  a  man 
to  keep  back  any  part  of  his  tithe,  was  to  rob 
God.  This,  they  held,  was  sure  to  be  fol¬ 
lowed  sooner  or  later  by  disaster.  The  ring¬ 
ing  words  of  the  prophet  Malachi  are  familiar 
to  us  all.  This  principle  seems  to  have  pre¬ 
vailed  in  other  nations  as  well. 

New  Testament  Teaching. 

When  we  turn  from  the  Old  Testament  to 
the  New,  we  find  no  word  by  our  Master 
about  any  abrogation  of  this  obligation.  To 
the  Pharisees  he  said,  “Ye  tithe  mint  and  rue 
and  every  herb,  and  pass  over  judgment  and 
the  love  of  God:  but  these  ought  ye  to  have 
done,  and  not  to  leave  the  other  undone.”  He 
seemed  to  assume  that  this  rule  was  to  con¬ 
tinue,  like  that  for  keeping  the  Sabbath,  and 
that  the  one  was  to  be  as  binding  as  the  other. 
That  we  are  responsible  to  God  for  the  use  of 
our  money,  is  further  made  clear  by  Christ’s 
parables  of  the  talents  and  pounds.  We  also 
have  the  command  of  Paul  to  give,  not  only 
systematically  and  universally,  but  propor¬ 
tionately ,  and  all  for  Christ’s  sake,  as  the  nob¬ 
lest  motive.  The  privilege  of  giving  was  em¬ 
phasized.  The  early  church  passed  naturally 
from  the  keeping  of  the  Jewish  Sabbath  to  the 
keeping  of  the  Christian  Sunday;  for  a  com¬ 
pleted  redemption  was  greater  than  a  comple¬ 
ted  creation.  In  a  similar  way,  out  of  the  old 


14 


principle  of  tithing,  they  came  naturally  into 
this  larger  conception  of  giving  out  of  love 
for  their  risen  Lord.  Is  it  reasonable  to  sup¬ 
pose  that  those  early  Christian  leaders,  after 
being  trained  to  pay  tithes  as  a  part  of  their 
religion,  would  encourage  less  generous  giv¬ 
ing,  when  they  came  into  the  liberty  of  the 
Gospel?  Under  the  law,  the  tenth  was  the 
least  any  one  could  give:  under  the  Gospel, 
“proportionate”  would  mean  to  the  rich  a 
still  larger  sum. 

Stewardship  is  the  great  idea  in  the  New 
Testament,  and  the  Christian  who  does  not  > 
recognize  this  is,  in  plain  language,  stealing 
trust  funds.  God  could  convert  this  world 
without  our  help,  but  he  has  chosen  to  take 
us  into  partnership  and  to  give  us  a  large  in¬ 
terest  in  the  greatest  work  in  the  world.  The 
money  he  helps  us  to  make  is  his  money  and 
how  we  use  it  is  a  test  of  our  discipleship. 

Objections. 

It  will  be  said  that  there  are  some  who,  be¬ 
cause  of  their  poverty,  cannot  give  one-tenth. 
There  are  such  persons,  just  as  there  are  some 
who,  because  they  are  engaged  in  works  of 
necessity  and  mercy,  cannot  keep  the  Sab¬ 
bath;  but  in  both  instances  these  are  the  ex¬ 
ceptions.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  the 
objectors  are  not  usually  the  poor,  but  those 
who  are  able  to  give  a  much  larger  propor¬ 
tion.  As  all  men  have  is  God’s,  is  it  too  much 
for  them  as  a  rule  to  give  a  tenth,  when  he 
loans  them  the  use  of  his  nine-tenths?  We 


15 


are  perfectly  willing  to  grant  one-seventh  of 
our  time  in  the  observance  of  the  Lord’s  day. 
Should  we  object  to  a  less  proportion  of  our 
money  ?  Especially,  it  should  be  remembered, 
in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other,  that  it  is  for 
our  own  best  good.  As  the  only  Christians 
that  are  worth  much  are  those  who  reverence 
the  Sabbath,  so  only  the  Christians  who  give 
generously,  as  they  are  able,  are  of  much 
value  in  the  great  army. 

Many  feel  that  they  are  going  to  be  impov¬ 
erished  by  giving  their  ten  percent.  My  own 
experience  and  observation  lead  to  a  different 
conclusion.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  does  not  God 
add  his  blessing  now,  as  in  Old  Testament 
days,  to  those  who  are  true  to  him?  Other 
things  being  equal,  such  an  one  is  more  likely 
to  succeed.  To  quote  in  substance  from  an¬ 
other,  is  not  nine-tenths  plus  God  more  likely 
to  bring  larger  results,  even  in  this  world, 
than  ten-tenths  without  him? 

Fidelity  and  Prosperity. 

On  the  contrary,  fidelity  in  giving,  and 
prosperity  for  ourselves,  as  a  rule,  go  together 
in  the  Kingdom  of  God.  Do  you  recall  the 
passage  in  Ex.  36:  2-7,  which  tells  how  the 
people  brought  every  morning  freewill  offer¬ 
ings  for  the  building  of  the  sanctuary?  After 
a  while  the  word  came  that  there  was  more 
than  enough  for  the  work  in  hand,  so  that 
Moses  issued  an  order  to  the  people  not  to 
bring  anything  more,  “for  the  stuff  they  had 
was  sufficient  for  all  the  work  to  make  it,  and 


i6 


too  much.”  In  the  record  of  the  days  of  Hez- 
ekiah  the  King  there  are  two  significent  sen¬ 
tences  in  one  verse.  (2  Chronicles  31 :  10.)  It 
is  stated,  that  the  people  brought  in  their  ob¬ 
lations  so  that  they  were  left  in  great  heaps, 
and  there  was  great  prosperity  among  the  peo¬ 
ple.  It  is  the  usual  rule,  that  those  who  hon¬ 
or  God,  God  prospers.  I  would  like  to  be 
president  of  the  Board,  when  the  treasurer 
should  report  to  the  prudential  committee 
such  a  condition  in  our  treasury  as  in  the  days 
of  Hezekiah,  when  the  supply  overtook  the 
demand,  and  have  the  joy  of  sending  out  a 
message  like  Moses  of  old,  that  we  had  enough 
and  to  spare  to  complete  the  work. 

Because  of  our  wrong  ideas  about  the  owner¬ 
ship  of  money,  our  prayers  >  also,  are  an  abom¬ 
ination  to  God.  To  pray  “Thy  Kingdom 
come,”  and  not  back  up  that  prayer  to  the 
full  extent  of  our  ability  with  our  gifts,  is 
what  Dr.  F.  E.  Clark  calls  “conscious  or  un¬ 
conscious  hypocrisy.” 

Legacies. 

One  of  the  saddest  instances  of  this  practi¬ 
cal  disloyalty  in  relation  to  money,  and  of 
failure  to  recognize  our  stewardship,  is  seen 
in  the  disposition  that  men  make  of  what  they 
call  their  money,  when  they  come  to  die- 
There  have  recently  passed  away  two  promi- 
inent  members  of  New  England  churches. 
God  had  given  to  one  of  them  an  estate  of 
about  a  million  dollars,  but  when  he  died  he 
did  not  leave  a  dollar  for  missionary  or  phil- 


17 


anthropic  work.  The  other  had  been  entrust¬ 
ed  by  God  with  an  estate  of  many  millions, 
and  yet  he  willed  only  a  very  small  percen¬ 
tage  of  his  wealth  to  philanthropic  work  and 
not  a  dollar  to  missions.  These  two  men 
might  have  encouraged  their  fellow  workers, 
but  instead  they  have  aroused  feelings  of  re¬ 
gret  and  disappointment,  and  in  religious  cir¬ 
cles  they  will  soon  be  forgotten.  And  then 
the  pity  to  themselves  of  what  they  have  lost 
in  the  world  to  come!  They  might,  without 
impoverishing  any  of  their  family,  have  so 
disposed  of  the  estates  that  God  let  them 
have  for  a  time,  that  they  would  to-day  be  a 
mighty  living  force  in  the  world.  Yea,  more 
than  this,  the  work  would  have  enlarged  un¬ 
der  the  divine  touch,  till  it  would  have  in¬ 
creased  a  hundred-fold,  for  as  many  years  as 
there  are  in  eternity.  I  often  think  with  sor¬ 
row  of  these  men  who  throw  away  such 
chances,  who  were  false  to  their  trust,  and 
who,  from  the  clear  light  of  the  other  world, 
now  see  it  all  when  it  is  too  late. 

The  First  Remedy — Teach  Kssentiae 
Christianity. 

How  shall  we  correct  this  two-fold  disloyal¬ 
ty,  which  narrows  the  bounds  of  the  Master’s 
Kingdom,  and  appropriates  the  money  which 
is  all  his?  First ,  let  me  answer  in  the  words 
of  a  letter  received  from  Rev.  S.  H.  Howe,  d.d.  , 
of  Norwich,  Conn.,  we  must  “ redefine  the 
missionary  commission;  even  back  of  that , 
we  have  got  to  redefine  Christian  discipleship." 


i8 


Then,  he  adds,  “I  believe  the  way  to  get  hold 
of  this  missionary  work  by  the  handle  is  to  do 
a  more  thorough  educational  work,  go  to  the 
foundations,  and  define  essential  Christianity, 
and  press  the  missionary  commission  on  all 
Christians.”  Is  not  this  an  admirable  state¬ 
ment  of  the  first  need  of  to-day?  It  is  wise  for 
us  to  continue  to  tell  of  the  success  of  the 
work,  and  of  the  changes  in  far-away  lands, 
where  permanent  institutions  are  being  found¬ 
ed,  and  society  is  being  reconstructed.  But 
there  are  many  who  still  remain  untouched. 
Somehow  the  paramount  claim  of  God  must 
be  pressed  home  upon  their  consciences,  un¬ 
til  they  are  made  to  feel  that  it  is  nothing 
short  of  treason  to  the  King  of  Kings,  to  trifle 
with  his  express  command.  A  very  promi¬ 
nent  layman  and  generous  giver  said  to  me  a 
few  weeks  ago,  that  it  was  a  sermon  on  “The 
Claims  of  Stewardship,”  preached,  not  by  his 
own  pastor,  but  by  a  stranger,  that  impelled 
him  to  give,  as  he  is  now  doing,  thousands  of 
dollars  a  year  for  missionary  work  at  home 
and  abroad.  Until  he  heard  that  sermon,  his 
mind  had  never  seen  his  responsibility  and  op¬ 
portunity.  Similar  sermons  preached  by  Rev. 
C.  U.  Morgan,  d.d.,  in  the  early  years  of  his 
ministry  so  impressed  several  young  men  of 
his  church  that,  as  they  increased  in  wealth, 
they  became  generous  givers  to  missions.  To 
carry  on  this  missionary  work,  is  not  simply 
a  wish  of  God’s;  it  is  God’s  order ,  which  we 
must  obey,  or  else,  at  the  great  assize,  we 
must  answer  for  its  neglect,  and  to  Christ  in 
person.  An  old  sailor  said  to  a  young  ap- 


19 


prentice:  “Aboard  a  man-o’-war,  my  lad, 
there’s  only  two  things — one’s  duty,  t’other’s 
mutiny.” 

The  Second  Remedy — Teach  the  Chie- 
dren  Wored-Wide  Missions. 

This  need  of  greater  loyalty  to  Christ 
brings  home  to  us,  with  increasing  emphasis, 
the  supreme  duty  of  the  church  to  train  at  once 
all  our  children  in  world-wide  missions.  My 
own  observation,  confirmed  by  others,  is  that 
we  have  almost  lost  a  generation  of  givers , 
and  are  running  on  the  momentum  created  by 
the  great  men  whose  faith  and  self-sacrilice 
gave  the  mighty  impulse  to  modern  missions. 
In  the  words  of  a  letter  from  an  honored  pas¬ 
tor,  “we  are  propagating  missions  largely 
from  what  holds  over  from  a  former  genera¬ 
tion.’  ’  Partly,  perhaps,  because  of  the  increas¬ 
ing  claims  of  what  we  call  the  humanitarian 
and  the  philanthropic,  and  partly  because  of 
the  interest  given  to  theological  discussions  in 
the  years  gone  by,  we  have  lost  sight  of  some 
of  the  great  fundamental  truths,  which  fur¬ 
nish  the  very  basis  and  motive  of  missions. 
The  noise  of  the  world  and  of  our  own  discus¬ 
sions  has  been  so  loud,  that  we  have  not 
heard,  as  we  ought,  the  voice  of  the  Master, 
“to  go  and  disciple  the  nations.” 

As  an  illustration  of  this  indifference  to 
missions,  where  we  should  naturally  expect 
deep  interest,  a  young  teacher  went  recently 
to  the  dean  of  a  Christian  academy,  and 
expressed  a  desire  to  have  organized  a  mission 


20 


study  class.  The  dean  replied  that  they 
already  had  a  Ladies’  Home  Missionary 
Union,  so-called,  which  gave  rides  to  poor  old 
ladies  in  the  town,  etc.,  and  she  thought  the 
girls  ought  not  to  be  asked  to  do  anything 
more.  Finally,  the  girls  themselves  came  and 
wanted  to  know  why  they  could  not,  like 
others,  be  allowed  to  take  an  interest  in  these 
larger  things.  A  pastor  would  not  permit  an 
officer  of  this  Board  to  say  anything  about 
specific  gifts  until  after  the  offering  had  been 
made.  He  then  consented,  but  was  properly 
rebuked  at  the  close  of  the  service.  A  labor¬ 
ing  man  stepped  up  to  the  pulpit  and  said, 
“My  mate  and  I  can  give  $2.50  a  month  to 
support  that  work;”  and  an  officer  of  the 
church  said  he  could  do  the  same.  Because 
of  this  prevalent  indifference  among  so  many 
in  the  generation  in  active  life,  it  is  very  diffi¬ 
cult  for  any  of  our  missionary  societies  to 
make  a  rapid  increase  in  current  receipts.  The 
officers  and  committees  might  well  exclaim, 
in  the  language  of  Alice  in  the  story,  “You 
have  to  run  as  hard  as  you  can  to  keep  where 
you  are!”  It  is  a  waste  of  power  to  devote 
most  of  our  time  and  energy,  as  we  have  been 
doing,  to  this  generation.  Their  habits  have 
become  fixed  and  will  not,  as  a  rule,  be 
changed.  Let  us  give  our  attention  more  to 
the  young  people,  who  can  be  reached  and 
molded  for  the  highest  things. 

Need  of  Leaders. 

In  the  new  campaign  to  reach  our  young 
people,  we  need  (A)  to  train  up  in  our 


21 


churches  young  leaders,  with  a  passion  for 
missions.  It  is  a  growing  conviction  that 
God  in  his  providence  selects  men  who  have 
special  qualifications  for  leaders.  By  their 
personality  and  earnestness,  they  interest 
others  and  make  them  active  participants. 
When  we  think  of  Hampton  Institute  and  its 
wonderful  work,  we  recognize  that  it  was 
General  Armstrong,  the  mighty  leader,  who 
not  only  planned  that  institution,  but  by  his 
own  unselfishness  and  intensity  of  purpose, 
interested  a  nation  in  his  efforts.  A  similar 
statement  may  be  made  of  Booker  T.  Wash¬ 
ington  and  his  school  in  Tuskegee.  In  a  less 
conspicuous  but  just  as  real  a  way,  we  have 
leaders  of  different  ranks,  who,  in  proportion 
to  their  opportunity  and  ability,  are  able  to 
interest  their  fellows  in  noble  work.  We 
need  such  leaders  along  missionary  lines  in 
every  local  church.  The  pastor,  of  course,  is 
the  natural  and  the  best  leader.  As  a  rule, 
he  has  a  hold  upon  the  people  and  an  oppor¬ 
tunity  to  influence  them  that  is  given  to  no 
one  else  in  the  community.  To  their  credit 
be  it  said,  that  many  pastors  are  using  their 
great  influence,  and  are  making  themselves 
the  missionary  leaders  of  their  people;  but  I 
am  very  sorry  to  say  that  many  others  are  not 
to  be  depended  upon.  The  officers  of  our 
missionary  boards  so  frequently  have  sad 
experiences,  that  they  cannot  fail  to  see  that 
there  are  large  numbers  of  pastors  whose 
interest  in  missions  is  most  superficial.  You 
can  tell,  when  you  speak  in  a  church  and  are 
introduced  by  the  minister,  just  how  much  he 


22 


believes  down  deep  in  missionary  work.  Of 
course,  the  pastors  are  always  courteous,  but 
oftentimes  they  evidently  have  very  little 
heart.  Especially  is  this  clear,  when  a  pastor 
'insists  on  taking  the  contribution  before  the 
address,  and  still  more  so,  when,  on  that  very 
Sabbath,  he  presents  to  his  people  some  other 
object,  evidently  lying  closer  to  his  heart,  as 
if  to  give  notice  that  he  does  not  wish  his 
people  to  get  so  much  interested  in  missions, 
that  they  will  neglect  this  other  need.  Mem¬ 
bers  of  congregations  sometimes  protest  to 
the  speaker,  after  it  is  all  over  and  it  is  too 
late  to  make  a  change.  Such  ministers  pray 
for  missions  only  seldom,  or  in  a  most  per¬ 
functory  way.  They  have  no  missionary 
meetings  in  their  churches.  They  may 
preach  one  or  two  missionary  sermons  a  year, 
but  the  whole  impression  conveyed  to  their 
congregations  is  that  it  is  not  very  serious 
business.  On  the  other  hand,  every  pastor 
needs  interested  leaders  in  the  pews.  This 
need  becomes  imperative,  when  the  minister 
is  indifferent.  It  must  be  admitted  that  there 
is  more  indifference  in  the  pews  than  in  the 
pulpit.  With  these  conditions  in  pulpit  and 
pew  alike,  do  we  not  see  the  necessity  of  a 
systematic  effort  to  train  leaders  in  all  our 
churches,  and  the  importance  of  such  confer¬ 
ences  as  those  at  Northfield,  Silver  Bay, 
Winona,  and  all  the  other  places?  It  must  be 
remembered  that  this  missionary  work  at 
home  and  abroad  will  never  be  done  by  a  few 
men.  What  could  the  national  republican 
and  national  democratic  committees  do  with- 


23 


out  smaller  committees  in  the  states  and  cities? 
In  a  similar  way,  we  must  have  a  missionary 
committee  in  every  church,  and  each  must 
have  a  leader.  There  should  be  in  all  our 
churches  experts  in  missionary  methods,  able 
to  render  this  service.  The  work  already 
accomplished  by  those  who  have  been  mem¬ 
bers  of  these  conferences,  shows  the  possibil¬ 
ity,  when  each  church  is  represented  every 
few  years  by  some  young  man  or  woman. 

Campaign  of  Intelligence. 

(B)  It  must  be  a  campaign  of  intelligence. 
The  leaders  must  be  able  to  furnish  the  facts 
regarding  modern  missions;  they  must  know 
the  methods  and  the  results.  Some  people 
are  indifferent  because  they  are  ignorant.  It 
is  education  and  not  exhortation  which  they 
most  need.  Many  people  are  moved,  not  so 
much  by  the  great  motives  of  missions,  as  by 
the  knowledge  of  what  they  have  accom¬ 
plished.  I  have  never  yet  seen  an  audience 
uninterested  by  the  man  who  could  marshal 
his  facts  and  figures,  and  pour  them  out  with 
earnestness  and  enthusiasm.  This  is  what  the 
average  American  needs  to  arouse  him  to 
action. 

This  campaign  of  intelligence  should  begin 
in  the  home .  The  father  and  mother  have 
the  first  touch  upon  their  children.  But  we 
have  to  remember,  that  in  many  homes  the 
parents  are  not  interested  in  missions  ;  hence, 
the  necessity  of  missionary  education  in  the 
Sunday  School.  Is  it  any  wonder  that  our 


24 


children  put  so  small  value  upon  missionary- 
work,  when  we  have  provided  no  place  for  it 
in  our  regular  study  ?  I  believe  the  time  has 
fully  come  when  home  and  foreign  missions 
ought  to  be  a  part  of  the  course  of  study  in 
every  Sunday  School.  Some  time  in  every 
year  it  should  have  its  place.  We  study  the 
men  of  the  Bible,  but  the  line  of  heroes  aad 
martyrs  did  not  end  with  the  early  years  of 
the  first  century.  Our  young  people  ought  to 
know,  not  only  about  Abraham  and  Moses  and 
David  and  Peter  and  Paul,  but  about  Judson, 
Morrison,  Divingstone,  Carey,  Hannington, 
Mackay,  Martyn,  Paton,  Riggs,  and  Hamlin. 
It  is  a  good  thing  to  know  which  Pharaoh 
was  on  the  throne  when  Moses  lived,  and  how 
many  chariots  could  be  driven  abreast  on  the 
walls  of  Babylon  ;  but  it  is  infinitely  more 
important  to  know  something  of  the  mission¬ 
ary  work  that  is  going  on  in  New  York  and  in 
Chicago ;  of  the  brave  men  and  women  labor¬ 
ing  among  the  shacks  and  dugouts  of  the 
West  and  the  rude  cabins  of  the  South.  Our 
children  should  know  something  of  the  story 
of  Japan  for  the  last  thirty  years,  of  its 
schools  and  its  missionary  leaders.  They 
should  know  that  its  great  men  are  almost 
universally  recognizing,  that  somehow  the 
America  that  Japan  loves  has  been  made 
what  she  is  by  the  power  of  Christianity. 
They  should  know  something  about  missions 
in  China,  the  nation  that  is  trembling  from 
head  to  foot,  as  she  awakens  out  of  her  sleep 
of  centuries.  I  submit  that  the  living  present 
is  worth  as  much  as  the  dead  past.  Certainly 


25 


let  the  children  study  the  great  works  of  God 
as  he  moved  among  the  Hebrew  people 
twenty  or  twenty-five  centuries  ago ;  but,  at 
the  same  time,  show  them  what  he  has  been 
doing  in  our  time,  in  the  missionary  conquest 
of  America,  and  in  the  movement  to  conquer 
the  world  for  Christ. 

Missions  in  Sunday  Schools. 

The  supreme  need  of  the  hour  is  the  train¬ 
ing  of  all  our  children  in  missions.  It  is 
well,  so  far  as  it  goes,  to  establish  in  all  our 
churches  mission  study  classes  to  instruct  the 
leaders,  but  this  is  not  enough.  May  I  re¬ 
peat,  that  all  our  Sunday  Schools  should  have 
some  regular  system  of  instruction?  Nothing 
else  will  do,  and  there  can  be  no  substitute. 
I  think  it  is  not  too  much  to  say,  that  the  mis¬ 
sionary  cause  is  lost  without  it.  My  own  ex¬ 
perience  and  observation  lead  me  to  say,  that 
no  young  man  can  enter  business  life  to-day, 
with  its  tremendous  pressure,  and  be  kept  out 
of  its  whirl  of  worldliness,  unless  he  has  been 
filled  first  with  the  missionary  spirit,  and  led 
to  believe  that  all  he  has  and  all  he  is,  be¬ 
longs  to  God.  Our  children  cannot  be  safely 
left  to  breathe  the  materialistic  spirit  of  the 
present  age,  without  first  being  made  spirit¬ 
ually  immune.  In  childhood  we  must,  by 
constant  teaching,  show  them  the  great  need 
of  this  work,  the  heroism  of  the  workers,  and 
the  necessity  that  those  who  cannot  go  abroad 
themselves  support  those  who  can.  Almost 
all  Sunday  Schools  have  difficulty  in  holding 


26 


the  boys  after  the}7  reach  a  certain  age;  they 
are  apt  to  feel  that  they  are  too  old  and  to 
slip  out.  I  believe  that  the  study  of  world¬ 
wide  missions,  home  and  foreign,  would 
attract  them  strongly,  and  would  help  to  hold 
them  in  this  critical  time  in  their  lives. 
They  would  become  familiar  with  the  men 
who  are  bringing  things  to  pass.  Full- 
blooded  boys  want  to  be  given  something  to 
do,  which  is  worthy  of  their  finest  ideals. 
Every  Sunday  School  ought  to  have  a  good 
set  of  missionary  maps,  a  missionary  library, 
and,  in  general,  proper  missionary  literature 
of  the  most  modern  kind.  We  must  be  will¬ 
ing  to  put  out  some  money,  feeling  sure  that 
we  shall  get  it  back.  Rev.  C.  H.  Beale,  D.  d., 
recently  said  at  a  conference  :  “I  know  of 
churches  that  pay  $2,000  a  year  to  four  per¬ 
sons  to  sing  three  times  at  one  service  on 
Sundays,  while  the  same  churches  pay  $250  a 
year  for  the  religious  education  of  five  hun¬ 
dred  children  and  youth  in  their  care.  This 
is  the  crowning  absurdity  of  our  church  life.” 
Worse  even  than  this,  a  prominent  Congrega¬ 
tional  church  spent  last  year  $3,500  for  music 
and  for  the  Sunday  School  $250.  A  member 
of  the  church  committee  recently  asked  the 
superintendent,  if  he  could  not  cut  down 
their  Sunday  School  appropriation  for  next 
year,  saying,  ‘‘$250  is  a  pretty  large  sum  of 
money  to  be  putting  into  the  Sunday  School !  ” 
Could  there  be  greater  folly?  We  must 
change  the  proportions  in  our  expenditure 
and  put  the  emphasis  at  a  different  place. 
This  idea  has  been  beautifully  expressed  by 


27 


Bisliop  Thoburn,  in  the  words,  “  Instead  of 
spending  herself  on  the  molding  of  lives  that 
have  first  to  be  unmolded,  the  church  should 
put  the  emphasis  on  molding  those  who  are 
now  pliable,  and  who  constitute  the  church 
which  is  to  be.” 

And  the  whole  object  of  this  missionary  in¬ 
struction  of  the  young  is  to  lead  them  to 
larger  giving.  To  awaken  the  intellect  and 
emotions,  and  then  not  to  give  the  latter 
practical  expression,  is  to  benumb  and  make 
callous  the  best  part  of  our  natures.  Too 
many  feel  that  the  amount  they  can  give  is  so 
small,  that  it  will  not  count  for  much,  and 
they  therefore  wait  until  they  can  give  more. 
The  way  to  form  the  habit  of  giving  is  by  giv¬ 
ing )  even  if  it  is  but  little.  Experience  shows 
that  missionary  study  does  lead  to  practical 
results.  I  am  indebted  to  Dr.  John  F. 
Goucher,  President  of  the  Woman’s  College 
of  Baltimore,  for  the  following  illustration  of 
the  tendency  of  systematic  and  persistent 
work  for  and  by  young  people. 

A  Marked  Instance. 

The  Pittsburg  Conference  of  the  Meth¬ 
odist  Episcopal  Church  contains  255  pastoral 
charges,  including  city,  town,  and  country 
work.  At  the  beginning  of  1901,  many  of 
these  pastoral  charges  were  without  any 
young  people’s  organizations,  and  in  some 
there  was  a  positive  opposition  to  having  the 
young  people  organized  for  or  engaged  in  dis¬ 
tinctive  church  work.  Many  of  their  Ep- 


28 


worth  League  Chapters  were  without  any 
appreciable  spiritual  force,  and  the  conference 
and  district  organizations  were  inactive.  Dur¬ 
ing  the  past  three  years  and  a  half,  there  has 
been  a  marked  growth  of  church  life  and  ac¬ 
tivity  in  all  desirable  directions,  and  this 
bears  a  striking  relation  to  the  development 
of  systematic  mission  study  by  their  young 
people,  as  the  following  figures  indicate:  — 


Mission 

Study 

Classes. 

1000  2 

1901  (About)  40 
1002  “  100 

1003  “  150 


Conference  Percentage 
Contribution  of  increase 
to  Missions.  over  igoo. 

$33,286 

38,058  14 

46,927  44 

64,231  00 


The  four  district  Epworth  Leagues  in  which 
the  largest  number  of  mission  study  classes 
have  been  conducted,  propose  to  maintain  a 
new  mission  in  the  island  of  Java,  Malaysia 
Conference,  which  the  church  authorities 
have  arranged  to  open  for  them.  They 
secured  $4,500  for  this  purpose  last  year, 
which  is  not  included  in  the  above  statement. 
The  missionary  has  been  appointed,  and  the 
work  will  be  commenced  this  fall. 

The  Conference  Epworth  League  supports 
a  Conference  League  Missionary  Secretary, 
who  gives  all  her  time  to  the  organization  of 
league  chapters  and  study  classes  within  the 
conference. 

Many  persons  have  grown  in  their  generous 
support  of  the  church.  The  following  state¬ 
ment  of  the  giving  of  one  person  is  a  sample. 
The  giving  of  some  others  is  even  more 
marked. 


29 


Contributed  in  1900  $  .50 

1001  1,50  commenced  tithing, 

1002  2.50 

1003  46.50 

The  growth  in  spirituality,  which  has  been 
emphasized  first  of  all,  is  the  chief  cause  of 
this  increase  in  activity  and  financial  co¬ 
operation.  In  other  words,  the  starting  of 
mission  study  classes  among  the  young  people 
in  this  one  conference,  has  had  such  an  in¬ 
fluence  upon  those  who  are  older,  that  the 
contributions  of  that  conference  in  four  years 
have  increased  from  $33,000.00  to  $64,000.00 
while  the  young  people  themselves  have  raised 
$4,500.00  besides,  and  started  a  new  mission. 
And  this  is  not  an  isolated  case ;  for  similar 
results  have  occurred  in  another  conference. 
It  pays  not  only  spiritually,  but  financially, 
and  that  speedily,  to  train  the  young.  It  is 
denominational  suicide  to  neglect  them. 

Such  early  training  makes  generous  givers. 
A  prominent  Congregationalist  was  asked 
why  he  gave  so  liberally  and  cheerfully. 
His  answer  was  :  “We  were  trained  to  it  when 
children,  and  we  could  not  sleep  on  our  beds 
if  we  kept  back  the  Lord’s  money.” 

“  Sow  an  act,  and  you  reap  a  habit; 

Sow  a  habit,  and  you  reap  a  character.” 

Teaching  oE  Psychology. 

Modern  psychology  shows  how  habits  be¬ 
come  so  fixed  and  permanent  that  there  are 
comparatively  few  radical  changes  in  charac¬ 
ter  after  the  age  of  twenty-five.  We  know 


30 


that  more  than  95  per  cent,  of  our  church 
members  have  confessed  Christ  before  that 
age.  After  twenty-five,  appeals  to  the  con¬ 
science  and  intellect  seem  to  have  little  force. 
I  believe  that  exactly  the  same  law  holds  in 
missionary  giving.  The  great  givers  were 
made  by  training  in  childhood  ;  the  indifferent 
and  the  shirkers  were  made  by  neglect  in 
childhood.  Suppose  that  for  the  next  twenty- 
five  years  the  protestant  churches  in  this 
country  should  enter  upon  a  thorough  and 
systematic  campaign  to  train  every  boy  and 
girl  in  missions.  The  generation  that  are 
now  neglecting  their  opportunity  would,  at 
the  end  of  that  time,  be  gone,  and  their  places 
in  the  business  and  industrial  world  would 
have  been  taken  by  this  new  generation  of 
trained  men  and  women. 

Wealth  oh  Christians. 

It  is  stated  that  the  wealth  of  the  world  in¬ 
creased  from  1800  to  1850  by  a  sum  equal  to 
the  total  wealth  accumulated  up  to  the  begin¬ 
ning  of  the  last  century.  From  1850  to  1875, 
or  in  twenty-five  years,  an  equal  amount  was 
added  for  the  second  time.  F rom  1875  to 
1890,  or  in  fifteen  years,  an  equal  amount  was 
added  a  third  time.  From  1890  to  1900,  or  in 
ten  years,  an  equal  amount  was  added  a  fourth 
time.  In  this  stupendous  wealth,  the  United 
States  has  had  the  largest  proportionate  in¬ 
crease.  The  following  table  is  a  statement  of 
the  wealth  of  the  United  States  as  estimated 
by  our  government  in  each  of  the  census 
years  since  1850. 


3i 


1850 

1800 

1870 

1880 

1890 

1900 


.  $  7,135,780,000 
.  10,159,616,000 

.  30,068,518,000 

.  42,642,000,000 
.  65,037,091,000 
.  94,300,000,000 


The  average  decennial  increase  since  1870, 
is  46.3  per  cent.  It  is  quite  probable  that  the 
percentage  of  increase  from  1900  to  1910  will 
be  considerably  larger.  Take  the  average  in¬ 
crease  of  the  past  three  census  years,  namely, 
46.3  per  cent,  and  it  appears  that  the  increase 
in  wealth  from  1900  to  1910  will  be  about 
$44,000,000,000,  making  the  total  wealth  in 
1910,  $138,000,000,000.  It  is  believed  that  the 
protestant  Christians  of  our  country  own 
about  $25,000,000,000.  As  we  add  to  it,  on  an 
average,  a  billion  dollars  a  year,  twenty-five 
years  hence, protestant  Christians  will  be  worth 
at  least  $50,000,000,000.  Suppose  now  the 
owners  of  this  wealth  had  been  trained  in 
childhood  to  give  to  missions  ;  would  there 
then  be  any  lack  of  money  to  prosecute  the 
missionary  work  at  home  and  abroad,  on  a 
scale  undreamed  of  at  present  ?  For  our  pres¬ 
ent  purpose,  let  us  throw  out  the  millions  of 
income  from  salaries  and  the  sales  of  mer¬ 
chandise  and  farm  products,  and  consider  only 
the  interest  on  accumulated  wealth.  The 
interest  on  the  $50,000,000,000  at  only  4  per 
cent,  would  be  $2,000,000,000.  If  the  average 
gifts  of  all  were  10  per  cent,  as  the  gifts  of  the 
trained  few  are  now,  we  should  have  an  income 
for  our  religious  work  of  $200,000,000.  Does 
any  one  say  that  this  is  idle  dreaming?  It  is 


32 


not  so  at  all ;  it  is  entirely  within  the  reach  of 
the  church  of  America  to-day  so  to  train  its 
boys  and  girls  that  just  such  giving  as  this 
will  be  the  inevitable  result.  This,  I  repeat, 
is  the  one  great  work  before  our  churches 
to-day.  Its  faithful  performance  will  change 
the  present  disloyalty  of  the  majority  into  the 
loyalty  of  all,  and  give  us  the  missionaries  and 
the  means  for  their  support,  necessary  to 
evangelize  the  world  in  twenty-five  years. 

If  any  person  is  still  skeptical,  may  I  call 
his  attention  to  the  accelerating  power  that  is 
developing  in  this  work  ?  At  the  beginning, 
while  foundations  were  being  laid,  the  work 
was  not  only  slow  but  discouraging.  Morrison 
labored  in  China  for  fifty  years,  and  at  the 
end  of  that  time  had  only  six  converts.  Dur¬ 
ing  the  first  twenty  years  of  our  work  in  Bom¬ 
bay  more  than  one  missionary  died  for  each 
convert.  Now,  the  work  as  a  whole  doubles 
every  ten  years. 

At  Silver  Bay  last  July,  a  missionary  from 
Korea  reported  that  in  that  country  the  relig¬ 
ious  forces  had  doubled  nine  times  in  seven¬ 
teen  years.  At  the  present  rate  the  whole 
world  will  be  converted  before  the  end  of  this 
century.  The  child  is  born  now  who  will  see 
it.  The  world  will  be  practically  Christian, 
as  much  as  America  is  to-day,  in  fifty  years, 
and  if  we  should  put  out  our  money  and  give 
our  men  as  we  might,  from  the  human  stand¬ 
point  it  could  be  done  in  twenty-five  years. 
I  would  like  to  live  that  number  of  years  and 
see  India,  China,  and  the  Dark  Continent 
glow  with  Christian  light  like  our  own  land. 


33 


The  Burning  Oup:stion. 

Does  anyone  wonder  why  the  president  of 
the  Board,  in  each  annual  address  for  the  last 
five  years,  has  laid  such  emphasis  on  the 
money  side  of  the  work?  I  am  sure  that  any 
one  who  hears,  both  from  the  men  at  home 
on  furlough  and  in  letters  continually,  the 
appeals  of  the  devoted  men  and  women  at 
the  front,  for  larger  appropriations  to  do  the 
broader  work  waiting  to  be  done,  is  in  honor 
bound  to  take  up  these  appeals  and  present 
them  with  aid  earnestness  to  the  representa¬ 
tives  of  our  churches,  hast  November,  when 
we  made  the  appropriations  for  the  year,  for 
six  hours  the  question  was  discussed,  whether 
or  not  we  could  safely  increase  these  grants. 
It  was  as  sacred  and  solemn  a  discussion  as 
was  ever  carried  on,  with  the  eternal  inter¬ 
ests  of  multitudes  involved.  It  was  finally 
decided  that,  with  the  outlook  at  that  time, 
an  increase  would  inevitably  mean  a  debt, 
which  would  be  a  weight,  a  hindrance,  and  a 
cause  of  depression  in  the  year  to  come.  But 
the  officers  of  the  Board  would  be  disloyal  to 
the  men  at  the  front  who  are  doing  our  work, 
yes,  Christ’s  work,  at  such  odds,  and  who  are 
breaking  down  prematurely  under  the  awful 
strain,  if  they  did  not  speak  again  and  again 
of  these  things.  I  have  very  recently  seen  a 
letter,  written  by  the  wife  of  one  of  our  best 
missionaries  to  her  sister  in  the  homeland. 
Both  husband  and  wife  are  doing  a  great 
work,  almost  more  than  they  can  bear,  and 
are  themselves  giving  one-half  of  their  own 


34 


small  salaries  to  carry  it  on.  You  know  what 
sacrifices  this  calls  for.  To  read  such  letters 
as  these  is  almost  unbearable.  If  the 
churches  had  not  the  ability,  we  might  be 
silent.  It  is  because  they  have  the  ability 
and  will  not  use  it,  that  we  must  speak,  or  be 
false  to  our  trust. 

We  are  living  in  a  wonderful  time ;  it  is  as 
never  before  the  age  of  the  young  people.. 
We  glory  in  what  Christian  Endeavor  has 
done  in  our  land.  We  rejoice  when  men  like 
Revs.  Robert  A.  Hume,  J.  P.  Jones,  and  F.  S. 
Hatch  tell  us  of  the  mighty  work  already 
accomplished  by  it  in  India.  We  are  grateful 
to  read  this  word  from  Rev.  W.  S.  Ament  in 
Peking,  that  “the  Christian  Endeavor  move¬ 
ment  and  its  principles  are  to  be  one  of  the 
great  forces  in  the  redemption  of  China.” 
We  glory  again  in  the  work  of  the  Interna¬ 
tional  Young  Men’s  Christian  Associations,  of 
which  there  are  already  three  hundred  in  the 
mission  fields,  about  one-half  of  them  in  col¬ 
leges  and  universities.  The  Student  Volun¬ 
teer  movement  is  also  taking  hold  of  the 
bravest  and  best  of  the  educated  young  men 
and  women  in  our  institutions.  We  shall 
have  in  the  next  few  years,  as  never  before,  as 
a  result  of  the  work  among  young  people,  re¬ 
inforcements  for  our  missionaries  at  home  and 
abroad.  We  must  match  this  consecration  of 
young  men  who  are  to  go  to  the  front  with 
an  equally  great  consecration  of  money  from 
those  who  are  to  stay  at  home.  This  is  the 
work  that  presses  now  above  everything  else, 
and  cannot  wait.  “  Nothing,”  says  Carlysle, 


35 


“  ever  happens  but  once  in  this  world.  What 
I  do  now,  I  do  once  and  forever.  It  is  over, 
it  is  gone,  with  all  its  eternity  of  solemn 
meaning.”  And  the  opposite  is  equally  true  ; 
what  we  neglect  is  also  forever  gone.  We 
cannot,  we  must  not,  be  false  to  our  trust  and 
our  opportunity  in  this  crucial  hour  in  the 
history  of  America  and  the  world.  Let  us 
throw  ourselves  and  all  that  we  have  into  this 
mission  work,  which  we  know  is  so  near  to  the 
heart  of  Christ.  It  was  his  one  purpose  in 
coming  to  this  world  of  sin  and  need  ;  should 
it  not  be  ours  ?  All  must  in  some  way  be  mis¬ 
sionaries  themselves,  or  support  generously 
those  who  are.  Anything  less  than  this  is 
disloyalty  and  treason  to  our  King.  May  dis¬ 
loyalty  be  forever  gone  in  a  passionate  desire 
to  do  the  Master’s  will  and  work  !  Then  we 
can  sing  that  great  hymn  of  James  Montgom¬ 
ery’s  which  closes  : 

“  Uplifted  are  the  gates  of  brass, 

The  bars  of  iron  yield ; 

Behold  the  King  of  Glory  pass  ; 

The  Cross  hath  won  the  field.” 


